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BCALA Literary Award - Nonfiction

The BCALA Literary Award is given annually for fiction, nonfiction, first novelist, and outstanding contribution to publishing. They are given by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association for outstanding works by African American authors.

This the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. The years between these two indispensable epochs saw the communal rise of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and many other influential black writers. While these individuals have been duly celebrated, little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works. With this study, the author recalls the lost history of a crucial era.

Traces the parallel lives of two youths with the same name in the same community, describing how the author grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar and promising business leader while his counterpart suffered a life of violence and imprisonment.

This biography describes a man of magnetic personality who counted Saul Bellow, Langston Hughes, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Richard Wilbur, Albert Murray, and John Cheever among his closest friends; a man both admired and reviled, whose life and art were shaped mainly by his unyielding desire to produce magnificent art and by his resilient faith in the moral and cultural strength of America.

The junior senator from Illinois discusses how to transform U.S. politics, calling for a return to America's original ideals and revealing how they can address such issues as globalization and the function of religion in public life.

2006

Michael A. Gomez

Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas

Wil Haygood takes from the beginning in vaudeville, where it all began for four-year-old Sammy, who ran out onstage one night and stole the show, up to the end. In his broad and varied friendships and alliances he forged uncharted paths across racial lines. Admired and reviled by both blacks and whites, he was tormented all his life by raging insecurities, and never quite came to terms with his own skin. Ultimately, his only true sense of his identity was as a performer.

2003

Elizabeth McHenry

Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies

Since the 1960s, civil rights activist Vernon Jordan has provided leadership to organizations such as the NAACP, the United Negro College Fund, and the National Urban League. Here, he describes his life including his work registering black voters in the South, his survival of an assassination attempt, and his relationships with American presidents and business leaders.

A light-skinned black woman, Toi Derricotte moved to an all-white neighborhood near New York City 20 years ago and began making journal entries of encounters with neighbors, family, and colleagues. The result is a brilliant and painful document about the complexity of race in America.

Sojourner Truth: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist, figure of imposing physique, riveting preacher and spellbinding singer who dazzled listeners with her wit and originality. Straight talking and unsentimental, Truth became a national symbol for strong black women - indeed, for all strong women.